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fangmcgee writes "Printers which can produce three-dimensional objects have been available for years. However, at the Vienna University of Technology, a printing device has now been developed which is much smaller, lighter and cheaper than ordinary 3D-printers. With this kind of printer, everyone could produce small, tailor-made 3D-objects at home, using building plans from the internet — and this could save money for expensive custom-built spare parts."

It's small, but probably not as cheap as a Rep Rap [reprap.org] which is a fully open-source implementation of a 3D printer that's been around for a few years. They've developed the first iteration into the 'Mendel' which has addrssed some of the issues they came across in initial development.

Why do you say that? The Rep Rap can produce the same quality as this commercial 3D printer if built properly and can fit in a better form factor if you really needed it to. What can this device do that the Rep Rap can't?

This thing has sub millimeter precision levels - I don't think the Rep Rap is quite so precise. That puts it in the potential tool category. The Fine Machine also uses a 'resin' based substrate and might well be strong enough and stable enough to make useful objects. The Rep Rap seems to be limited by it's relatively weak thermoplastic material.

I'd think the precision on makerbot, rep raps, etc. is sub-millimeter given that similar stepper motors I've seen driving the carriage and platform could get you there.

What's interesting though, is as you mentioned, using this light activated resin with none of the usual extruder complications. I'd really like to see some finished, intricate product out of the prototype. At 20th of a millimeter layer thickness for Z resolution, and good X,Y res, I'd like to see what you get.

Resolution is limited by the deposition process, not the Cartesian robot. On the typical RepRap, thats around 0.5mm, although some guys are experimenting with finer nozzles. High res 3D printers exist -- one I have seen prints UV curable resin using something like an ink-jet process. Outrageously fine resolution.

I have a CupCake -- it's tweaky. It's fun for hackers, but it isn't turn-key, it's a lifestyle choice.

Have you seen any other better designs out there worth considering? I have occasional use for knocking out little prototype parts, but it always seemed like anything below expensive, commercial turn-key was kinda... as you said... "tweaky".

I think the finest detail size to manufactured object size ratio is on RepRap's size, and commercial application of this is primarily limited by absolutely tiny work area. And the resin is expensive. Sure this has its place where one needs tiny precise custom parts. But I believe objects bigger than a cubic inch are in higher demand...

There was a different project, that utilized similar approach but much better work area. http://blog.makezine.com/ [makezine.com]

Not only is it far from cheap, the chemicals used in the resin are far from cheap. Previous DIY versions (e.g. http://3dhomemade.blogspot.com [blogspot.com]) are much cheaper to build, though to my knowledge there has yet to be a breakthrough in finding a cheaper (near)UV-activated resin with the right characteristics.

This is a litigation timebomb that is going to loudly and messily explode in the near future.

If technological progress has taught us one thing, it is that industries with a vested interests against this progress have caused huge problems in the uptake and development of those technologies. Witness the lack of standards for both web audio and video despite 20+ years of research and development. Witness the paltry excuse for digital media distribution in the music and movie industries(though things are slowly

Your example, the "Coke recipe", is the textbook definition of trade secret [wipo.int]. Stealing a trade secret in some places is a felony (California [ca.gov], for example, which is why the Gizmodo editors shit their pants when APple involved the police over the iPhone 4 prototype), due to the magnitude of economic harm. However, it's not a copyright issue. It's a separate body of intellectual property law.

In the case of a trade secret, once it's revealed, it's no longer a trade secret. The original holder of the trade secr

Lego has fairly simple shapes - one if its many strengths - but you need loads of them to make decent structures. There may be a market producing spare bricks when yours break or if you lose one little block in your kit. I don't think I've ever broken a Lego brick, but I have lost lots over the years. Simply for convenience that might win, but I imagine that Lego will still be cheaper when bought as a kit. Lego is moulded and using a very specific

Custom models would be a great use for this by games workshop themselves.Put a 3d model viewer on their website, let players pick the model, armor, facial expression, weapons, and gear, and let them pose the figure by manipulating the joints. With that model saved to a server the player could order it online or take a code to a local game shop (that has a licensed model printer) and get it printed right there.

It may not be as small, but just about -- and a kit is $1299US, cheaper than $1707US ($1200EU), but some assembly is required, and it doesn't harden a bath of patented chemical liquid with LEDs -- Makerbot builds things using a plastruder (high res hot glue gun) and a spool of "lego" plastic.

Still waiting for the "revolution".... I feel that it's just around the corner.

I have a MakerBot -- I wouldn't call it a "bear" to calibrate, but it *is* tweaky. The one linked to here has much better resolution than a makerbot, and presumeably is turnkey. The MakerBot isn't turnkey -- it is a lifestyle choice:) but great fun if you are the tinkering type. But nobody would confuse the output with service bureau SLA output.

I think I'd be more interested in a tabletop CNC mill, personally. They're fairly comparable price-wise, but they don't limit you to working with plastic. I'd expect them to be a lot more precise, too.

Well, yes, but a totally different animal. I own a makerbot, and have used a Tormach, a ShopBot, and a Techno. The MakerBot is far simpler to use, and far less messy. Our makerbot is in the living room. No CNC mill is going to live there, spitting chips and collant all over the place, and potentially ripping the arm off an unwary passerby. It's very handy to be able to print small widgets in plastic quickly and easily, even with size and resolution limitations. But there are times when that doesn't cut it, and you go machine plastic, aluminum, brass, or steel on a mill.

Don't be taken in by the little CNC mill ads that you see for little guys like the Sherline -- not that the Sherline is bad, but most people that haven't used a mill don't understand the limitations. The work envelope is so small you can't make much of interest, and the machine isn't rigid enough to do anything harder than aluminum and even then you need to take pretty light cuts. And guess what -- end mills and dial indicators and so forth don't cost less just because you are going to use them on a Sherline -- the mill is just the beginning of the expenses and buying a cheap mill is sort of silly when you compare the cost of the mill to the tooling. The smallest, wimpiest mill I would even consider spending my money on is a Tormach. http://www.tormach.com/ [tormach.com]

And then there is ease of use. My 12 year old daughter prints doll house furniture on the MakerBot. In a CNC machine shop, the machinist that has been there ten years is "the new guy" -- there is *huge* amount to learn to become anything beyond a hack hobby machinist like me.

Fantastic link - anybody seriously interested in prototyping should take a look at the Tormach mill systems. High quality, adaptable, professional capabilities, and not that expensive for what they can do, especially when resale value is taken into account.

I own a tabletop CNC Sherline mill. I have also used 3D printers. They are not really comparable. The mill is definitely more precise, and can shape metal and very strong engineering plastics like acetal. But it is much more limited in what it can do. A mill cannot carve out an internal cavity, it cannot cut sharp internal angles or overhangs, and for complex parts it requires frequent user intervention for tool changes and repositioning. CNC mills and 3D printers are different tools with different s

I'm not all that interested in making the unit smaller since I'd like to make something other than freaking cufflinks or shirt buttons.Make that thing bloody bigger! I want to print out a new car!Ok, that was a bit of an exaggeration, but wouldn't it be cool?

Computer - want a PC, Laptop, or even cell phone. What did people do in the early days? They bought an Apple, C64, or Atari ( I had an Interact). Mainframes existed at the time, better languages existed than BASIC. Think of these things as the early stages of a revolution. As people grow up with these inferior tools, they will be inspired to make better ones, and to learn about the good ones that already exist.

Yes they suck, but it's the fun of DOING stuff that counts. And you certainly don't need a real machine shop to make toys.

As a kid I made toys into other toys with tape.

Recently I made a full sheet sized workbench and integrated a portable table saw that I got used for $20 with the top accessories but without the fences into it... without measuring:) (I held stuff up to other stuff and scribed it. It came out really nice.)

Baahahahahaha. Seriously? SERIOUSLY? No, instead you'll poison little johnny with crap PVC which bleeds dioxin and with lead paint which turns up on dollar tree items AGAIN and AGAIN. I'm on the CPSC recall list and they are probably the single worst offender of the federal lead paint standards. Stuff is made FOR them, virtually always in China, so they are directly responsible.

I am on a crusade against the dollar store because they carry lead paint warnings in English only in a store which is shopped heavi

Except that those things are injection moulded in quantities of hundreds of thousands, so the cost of production setup is negligible once amortized across the production run. And you have to make those parts in order to build the device in the first place. Thus, those costs are sunk costs whether you sell a single repair part or not. This effectively means that you have to build those cost into the cost of the product, not the repair part. The repair parts are just a few hours of extra production at the

I'm guessing you've never used a lathe, milling machine, shear, press brake, injection molding machine, or other serious piece of equipment to make something from scratch.

That's kinda the point. There are a lot of items that require moderately high precision but aren't produced in large enough quantities for huge economies of scale to kick in (or for there to be a lot of competition between different producers.)

However 3D printers, given a high enough quality which this particular example seems to possess, will allow individuals to print out new parts for the price of materials plus electricity, with the cost of the printer amortized over the number of uses they find for

That's what the normal machine tools he listed are for though, low run, custom stuff.

For mass production you get custom dies for stamping and cutting, blow molding, casting, etc, and CNC for the tricky bits. Things that cost more in initial setup but speed up, reduce skilled labour requirements, and labour in general, so it pays off in the end.

I suppose a 3D printer is like a really shitty CNC mill equivalent, that can't handle metal. Guess you can't expect much though.

It's like your 2D printer that will never replace an offset press, but (eventually) people not skilled to work with professional tools or without money and space for a well equipped workshop could use one for decent quality personal or professional one-off pieces.

But with a 3D printer you don't need all those normal machine tools. If it's a part that the 3D printer is capable of printing at high enough tolerances and in the right material (and as the technology continues to involved the quality of both the printing process and the materials used will improve) then it will be cheaper to print it yourself than to order it from someplace using old style mass production techniques. The cost of the equipment that needs to be amortized is far less that way, and there are

The sick thing about it is that the replacement part is so over-inflated that making a one off good enough part yourself starts making economic sense even though it is typically made in runs of many thousand with almost no labor per unit..

Put another way, are we really supposed to believe that fully half of the cost of the dishwasher was the track wheels? I don't think so.

I owned a home once so have plenty of tools for woodworking, nothing for metal or plastic but a hacksaw and a dremel. It's the clips which hold the wheels on that would be the pain point using stock materials. I'd much rather invest in something like this 3d printer for random small parts though. Still too pricey for general utility unfortunately. I may come up with a revenue hobby to write off the expense, maybe making dishwasher track wheels;)

So there is a significant difference between cost of wheels that are in the dishwasher and wheels that are not a part of it?Or do you purchase $40 wheels to install in $500 ($300 bulk) dishwasher before shipping it off to stores? If you add up cost of all parts it would appear that by assembling the dishwasher you reduce its price by 80%, because bought "in parts" it would be above $2000?

I'm not buying your bullshit. The material costs actually $0.02, the whole manufacturing and distribution would place the

I've got access and use regularly our 3D printer at work, and the one thing I've come away with is that it just wouldn't be as useful at home as you'd think. Don't get me wrong, I love the machine for work purposes... it's soooo much faster and easier than sending a prototype part out to a machine shop, but but it just wouldn't be worth it for home use.

Dishwasher track wheels: Yes, you could do it. this might be feasible. I don't know how well the material would hold up under constant thermal cycles an

Lego bricks have precision that is *FAR* higher than what is apparently obtainable with this device. You may very well be able to make your own Lego parts, but they probably wouldn't fit regular Lego very well.

Lego bricks have precision that is *FAR* higher than what is apparently obtainable with this device. You may very well be able to make your own Lego parts, but they probably wouldn't fit regular Lego very well.

Ha ha! So right. Mega Bloks are sucky. Lego is outrageously precise injection molding -- that's one of the reasons they cost so much, the tooling is super precise. On the spectrum of machinists there are hack hobbyists like me, professional machinists, mold makers, gods, and Lego's mold makers.

Even Mega Bloks' precision is higher than this machine, which has a stated minimum feature size of 50 microns. Mega Bloks utilizes a precision of about 10 microns, while LEGO molds are made within a tolerance of only 2 microns.

There is manufacturing precision and there are "analog" tech tricks to get things done.

Print a brick that is a notch more "loose" than real Lego. Dip in the resin, shine UV to cure it halfway-soft. "Plug" into real lego to push the soft layer of resin to match precisely. Cure completely. If too loose, add another layer.

The beauty of manufacture engineering is that you can lie to the machine and make it create things it was not intended to do. Using tools it was never designed to work with, forcing it to do

So, can someone explain to me how this is different from a small personal CNC mill? With the obvious exception that this is plastic goo, instead of a block of alloy to start with.

Try to do something like this with a CNC mill [shapeways.com].
The image was linked from the shapeways.com [shapeways.com] site and used only as an example (I'm not endorsing or promoting their services - just been impressed of some 3D printed models I found there).

Milling is a subtractive process. Start with a block of stock material and a drawing of the part you want. Cut away everything that ain't your part.

3D printing is an additive process. Start with feedstock material of some kind, and through some process fuse bits of it together to form your part. The machine in the article solidifies a resin slurry. Many 3D printers extrude plastic rod through a heater barrel, and deposit the molten plastic onto previous layers and let the whole thing solidify again. There are many 3D printing processes with various advantages and drawbacks.

Both milling and 3D printing involve a Cartesian robot that moves the tool head and/or the build table to achieve X/Y/Z positioning. A key difference between something like the MakerBot is that there are zero side forces on the tool head as it moves around. When you are driving cutting tool through steel stock on a mill there are big-time side forces. This is the key reason 3D printers are small, light, and office friendly, and why mills are big, nasty machines that weigh thousands of pounds and can rip your arm off.

How is the lathe powered? Maybe if it's powered by a donkey on a treadmill, but I'm not sure how you'd make the geatbox for a lathe. If it's electric, I'm fairly sure you can't make an electric motor with nothing but a lathe...

The three machines that were used to make all other machine tools are:

Lathe
Milling machine.
Surface grinder.

You need both a milling machine and a surface grinder to make precision beds for a lathe.

You need a lathe to make screws for a mill. You need a lathe to make the fixture to turn a surface grinder into a rotary grinder. You need a rotary grinder to make end mills, spiral drills and reamers.

You need layout dye and a hand scraper to make a precision bed for a lathe. Surface grinders are a mere convenience item. The lathe existed before mills, the mill is a replacement for the shaper.

Go to Lindsay Books, and check out the home workshop series by Dave Gingery. Volume 1 starts with a charcoal fired crucible furnace that you can build in an old 5 gallon can. Volume two has the patterns for all the castings you need to build a metal lathe using nothing more sophisticated than a hand drill. Vol

Until it gets below $1K I personally don't see home 3D printers taking off. Until it comes standard with a turntable & infrared camera for the average person to scan & replicate their own items, it'll just be too expensive for the average person when you can get a MakerBot for $1300USD. Don't get me wrong I see them sticking around, but remember until the Apple// got an (official) hacked shugart floppy drive it was just a hobbyist machine that played cassette games.

What always gets me is this: what if you combine the two? Have a depositor with a pretty fine tolerance (say a 0.1mm nib), and a small CNC unit built into it, say 4 axis. I imagine you could get some pretty insane shapes and really nice tolerances. Especially something that can deposit multiple materials, say wax, plastic, etc. With wax you could then coat it in plaster and sand, melt the object out and voila, you can caste a metal part.

Well, except that the resolution limit in 3D printing isn't the Cartesian robot, it's the material and method of deposition. With the print head I'm currently using on my makerbot, the extruded thread of ABS is about 0.45mm give-or-take the phase of the moon, the color of the plastic feed stock, etc.

But essentially you are correct -- if you already have a perfectly good Cartesian robot, just put a 3D print head on it. Although if you use a plastic extrusion process you will also probably want a heated bui

The problem is that a cartesian bot for milling needs to be far stiffer and far powerful than one used for extruding plastic, making the bot needlessly expensive, although there is a guy on the reprap forums who made a printer from lathe parts. Building his own controller and writing his own G-code interpreter.

The machine has to be stronger for milling, yes, but not as strong as if the machine had to mill from a solid block. Also we are talking about milling plastic here, not steel. The 3-d printer can make a reasonable approximation of the final shape additively and that "rough" is milled down to perfect dimensions. It's not crazy at all and the fabber/maker/cnc community kicks the idea around a lot.

Personally I think mold making is the killer app for fabbers and cnc. Casting gets around lots of material lim

Has anyone here worked with 3D printers? The results I've seen are great for prototyping but not much more than that. The material they produce is soft, wears easily, melts / warps at a low temperature, and isn't very smooth.

It would be great to have at home a small CNC mill would provide something that could produce a sturdy and useful end result. For the most part 3D prints I have seen so far could never be used as spare parts for anything... well not for a very long period of time... or even really a sho

I imagine this would be one way to introduce the concept to the non-maker/hacker proletariat. Something relatively inexpensive that doesn't really produce anything practical right out of the box, but is fun as hell to use. You can just picture the commercials - "Make dinosaurs! Race cars! Amaze your friends!" It'd be great if the material is reusable like Play-Doh, unless your goal is to make money on the goo rather than the machine. Soon enough users will start hacking the toy version to use different mate

The current generations of machines are the equivalents of PDP or Data Generals (for serious work) or the Kim for hobbyists (eg, maker bot)
In 10 or 15 years, you will be able to buy a 3D printer from HP or Epson or Canon that is....amazing.
Aside from hardware, cheap, usable 3D printers will also requrie cheap, sophisticated software that is seamless from design to tool path; none of htis clunky crap you get with CNC mills where you need $$ software to design the part (solid works) and $$ software to trans

Success or failure is going to largely depend upon resolution. Something that is chunky, with visible layers (and therefore shear planes), etc. isn't going to be of much use. Is there any talk of what the resolution of this device is?